ROBERT LESLIE FIELDING
Be kind to everyone you meet.
You may never see them again.

I wish we could number our age, like the Chinese, beginning at 1 when you are born. 

 

I would be able to talk about things I can’t really remember when I was minus 1 – 1 in China , same as my Dad could, if he was still in that chair.

  “Mountbatten handing India back to th’Indians – that were t’ biggest thing that happened that year – apart from you coming into our world, lad,” he would have said.

 

And the half century done, and you not yet one and a ration book all of your own. 

  “That’s our Robert’s orange, is that.”

 

Clement Attlee losing to Churchill.

  “I thought we’d done with him, I did.”  What did I know, gurgling happily away in my pram.

  “Beryl, I think our Robert’s done something!”

 

  “Your Mum’s going to have a baby, Robert.  What will you do then?”

I wanted to say I’d put her in my little red wheelbarrow and tip her out, but I didn’t.

 

  “And what shall we call her?” 

  “ Gillian.” 

  “What about a second name though?”

And me, not yet five, “Why don’t we call her after the queen?”

And we did, ‘Gillian Elizabeth’!

  “I just ‘ope she don’t get Liz or Lizzie at school.”  But she never did.

 

Coming home with my school report – Robert could do better – that’ll get me a thick ear.

  “I don’t like Missus Smith, that’s why!”

  “Yer not going to school to like anybody, yer going because……”

 

I didn’t fail my eleven plus, it failed me.  It came too early – a massive junction.  Some went to Hulme Grammar and me and my pals went to Uppermill before becoming what we were cut out for – plumbers and electricians – I wanted to be a Laboratory Assistant, because I liked Science.

 

  “You will be in 1 Alpha, Fielding!” on my first day, with Nan Schofield, Fez and Dot Squash , all booming voiced and big like black and white bullfinches bellowing at us in morning assembly.

 

But I liked Fez, once I got used to him, and he liked me, I think.

  “Your style of writing, Fielding, is somewhat reminiscent of Bernard Levin!  You could become a journalist”

  “’Ee’s no right putting notions like that into his head.”

  “Our Robert ‘d make a good bobby!”  But my eyesight saved me from the uniformed branch before a life in the Force. 

 

My formative years ended right then.

 

I settled on a trade, after all that ‘being examined’, and ‘my height being checked’ down at Longsight – Manchester Police Cadets.

 

  “There’ll always be a need for centre lathe turners, Mister Fielding”, to my Dad, and blow what I wanted.

 

One day a week at Oldham Tech – Mechanical Engineering in G-Star.

  “You don’t seem to have done your homework again, Mr. Fielding!”

  “That is correct, Sir, I haven’t!”

I didn‘t think I stood a chance with City and Guilds, but I passed with Credit – which didn’t make a ha’peth of difference to Mr. Sugworth in his toffeenosed office at Compoflex.

 

  “I tell you, lads, it’s us an’ them!” from a barrack room lawyer.  I didn’t care tuppence about all that then.  I couldn’t wait to get washed and out with me mates till chuckin’ out time.

  “Double and bull finish – good arrers!”

 

  “You want a bank loan for what exactly”

  “For me holidays,” I said, still wet behind the ears.

  “Well, I’m afraid we can’t give any money for that sort of thing!” 

  “How much do you earn?”

  “Eh?

  “What is your wage, from this, erm Buckley and Taylor’s?”

  “48 pounds a week.”

  “48, that ‘s more than I erum….”

 

What happens you meet someone, she gives you summat, then you ask her something, and that’s that.  Before you know what’s hit you, you’re both sitting at a desk in the Halifax Building Society, up Oldham.

  “You seem to have had rather a lot of jobs – erm Robert.”

  “ Are you going to give us a bloody mortgage or not,” was all I wanted to say.

  “I haven’t been unemployed!” was what came out.

 

  “With all my worldly goods, I thee endow.”

  “There goes his bike,” said Mum.

 

It were all right, I suppose, but I knew there were something else in me.  Reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn in my breaktimes instead of the Soaraway Sun got me talked about by the trustees from the toolroom where I worked.

  “What’s up with this lot?” I asked my mate, Frank.

  “Nowt!” he said, “it’s just they can’t make out why you like poetry an’ read all the time.”

 

‘Ideally, Robert, middle management would have suited you if you had your A-Levels - kind of nonsense’, from them that’s supposed to know, down at the Ministry of Labour.

 

And through all that, we had Macmillan and Harold Wilson – boom and slump – up and down – Eric ‘n’ Ernie, The Fab Four, while you had Eisenhower and Kennedy, and then Dallas and Elvis, Little Richard and The Beach Boys.

 

We had The Beatles and Liverpool, you had California Dreamin’ and the golf caddies.  You had Vietnam and all that Gulf of Tonkin stuff, we had Profumo and Christine Keeler, and Brady and Myra Hindley. 

 

Instead of the American Dream, we had Supermac telling us, “You’ve never had it so good!”

 

You had ‘Death of a Salesman’ to tell it like it was, we had ‘Saturday night and Sunday morning’.  You had Reagan, we had Thatcher.  You’ve got Bush, we’ve got Blair – same difference really.

 

Robert Leslie Fielding